The Humanity+ website is the successor to the World Transhumanist Association (WTA) I reviewed here last year. That website has become an archive, while the new website accomplishes the stated goal of a "desperately needed website redesign and brand identity overhaul." The design is clearly inspired by Web 2.0 trends, but beyond the fresh paint job, the new Humanity+ website has failed to adopt much else from Web 2.0, let alone more recent trends.

Before I can continue with this review, a disclaimer: I was briefly Executive Director of Humanity+ earlier this year. I interacted with the design firm and helped approve the finishing touches on the new design and content hierarchy but I left prior to the launch of the new website. Talk about being biased...

Design

I give it to the (separate) designers of the logo and the website: these designs exemplify Web 2.0. The colors are bright and carefully selected; the site is strongly horizontal with vertical color choices selected to offset some boxes from others; text is big and easy to read; and imagery is much more prominent than in the old website. Following the links at the top of the page lead to separate sections like "Learn" and "Projects"; design themes carry over attractively from page to page.

The Humanity+ logo is dynamic and more fun than the old WTA logo. While I have heard occasional complaints about the logo being too childish, I honestly believe this is exactly the direction the organization needed to take in its brand identity and designs. When Humanity+ spun off h+ Magazine, the original circled "h+" logo based on the Humanity+ logo went with them. I briefly toyed with a redesigned "h+" but you would never mistake my design skills for that of professionals. I am embarrassed to see that Humanity+ has used the logo I designed on the front page header of the new website, in an attempt to provide some balance to the whitespace that precedes "humanity+". The logo does not fit with the rest of the website design, and does not provide the expected balance. Removing this "h+" logo and rearranging the remaining text, while taking advantage of the giant and faded "humanity+" in the background, would go a long way to improving the header.

An unanticipated downside of the design not apparent in the concept art is how blog posts on the front page can stretch the middle white area until it is no longer horizontal. When that white area stretches vertically too far, it hides the bottom boxes of featured items and makes the page overall less appealing. That is, the vertical white and its gray sidebar clashes with the horizontal header and feature area below it. By limiting the number of blog posts featured on the front page, or radically shrinking the vertical size of each post, the white area could be kept to a primarily horizontal dimension that fits with the other horizontal blocks.

There are other glaring bugs on the website. For example, the "humanity+" logo in the footer of many pages is missing, the links to content in other languages are broken, and the privacy policy and terms of use pages are only placeholders.

Content

Despite these problems, the website is otherwise smartly designed and the various sections provide a somewhat satisfactory tour of transhumanism and related information. Some of this content has been copied over from the old website, and within the new design take on a more attractive look. For example, the Transhumanist Declaration is easy to read and prominent on its page.

Blog posts are now more prominent and there is an attempt at a media page (the "View" page.) However, there is much more content that could be added, and new content is not added very often. The new design works but the content is basically the same as it was on the WTA website, and that is a shame. As I mentioned in my review of the WTA website, "[a]n official website devoted to a social movement like transhumanism should have a wealth of information not only for those who identify with the movement, but for those who are learning about it for the first time. [...] The wealth of information is difficult to parse, for new and old visitors alike." While the available information may be easier to parse in the new design, where is the updated content to befit a major redesign and relaunch? How are new visitors being invited into and drawn through the new website?

Web 2.0 offered more than just a design aesthetic. It provided the tools for radically improving social networking, bringing us into the era of Facebook and Twitter. Although (rare) Twitter posts are visible in a sidebar on the "View" and "Read" pages, and news is announced in blog format (the CMS used is WordPress), these are only superficial attempts at social networking. Visitors do not have anything to do other than read content, donate money, sign up for mailing lists, and view a few embedded videos. Is this all the official transhumanist website can offer to the transhumanist movement? You have only to visit h+ Magazine and its community website to see what Humanity+ is missing.

That is too bad, because Humanity+ - both the name and the original framework behind it - could have been so much more. Design-wise, we get a Web 2.0-looking website after Web 2.0 has been declared dead. Content-wise, the Humanity+ website is nearly a match for the WTA website, but that is not enough. Humanity+ needed an entirely new framework, with improved, new, and frequently updated content, for reaching out to and keeping new visitors and existing transhumanists alike. Humanity+ needed to take a whole new approach to transhumanism that would take advantage of the best the web has to offer for bringing people together while educating and entertaining them.

Instead, with the web rapidly transitioning into something that involves depth, intelligence, and software-like functionality, availability on a variety of platforms, and bringing people together in new ways, the new Humanity+ website is already obsolete.

The World Transhumanist Association (WTA) website is a comprehensive site for information about transhumanism. That is the good news. The bad news is that the web site design is dated. Web 1.0 dated. The great news: after a successful fundraising event, the WTA is undergoing a branding and website redesign.

Design

With a four-column format that makes some use of tables for layout (!!!), the WTA site is nothing if not cluttered. The color design is fairly uniform but the salmon, orange, and light blue header color scheme may not have been the best of choices, especially considering that none of these colors appear in the WTA logo.

Of the WTA logo, let us just say that the rebranding and redesign will be very helpful.

Web 1.0 design packed information onto a website by using small text and cluttered lists of links to additional pages. There was lots of scrolling, or there was lots of clicking links. The WTA website is firmly a product of the early 2000s. The index page is a list of headlines and links. Following resource links often leads to more lists of links. What you will not find are many images or graphics.

The first aesthetic differences in Web 2.0 design were readily apparent: easier to read and larger text, horizontal blocking of content, increased use of (large) graphics and icons, and an almost storyteller-like flow of information. Fortunately, the "WTA $25,000 Matching Grant" page is a hint of what is to come, and a refreshing example of the best of Web 2.0 design. It is telling that the very page devoted to raising funds for the identity and website update is a very good model for that update. I doubt that the fundraising would have been nearly as successful had the page looked like the rest of the website.

Every social movement has had its aesthetic sensibilities reflected in propaganda, flyers, artwork, music, etc. Because of the very nature of the transhumanist movement, including the prominent status of technology at its core, it must embrace the latest in web technologies in addition to creating its own artistic language. To date, the transhumanism movement has failed to do so, and this is reflected in the current WTA website.

With Web 3.0 (my definition: semantic web, sensor web, mashups of databases, machine automation, websites as software applications, the use of depth in design, and the emphasized use of graphics, audio, video, and multimedia instead of text) upon us, the transhumanist movement must leap over Web 2.0 if it is to become relevant. A single page hints that the WTA is ready to make this leap, if only by demonstrating a quick mastery of Web 2.0 design techniques.

Content

An official website devoted to a social movement like transhumanism should have a wealth of information not only for those who identify with the movement, but for those who are learning about it for the first time. The WTA website gets high marks for containing lots of information, with much of that content also available in other languages. Information is helpfully categorized in the left sidebar under "To Do", "To Read", and "Lingua" topics. This does not quite match the options in the primary navigation bar across the main center devision, and this highlights the clutter of the site. The wealth of information is difficult to parse, for new and old visitors alike.

News and events are kept up to date, but via more lists of links. It is not clear how "News from the Edge" and "Recent H+ News" are different, why the "Transhumanity Blog" is lost at the bottom of one of the columns, or how any of these relate to the WTA.

It is easy to critique a website that is clearly not an example of modern web practices. This is a failing of the WTA, but one they hope to rectify with their new identity and website update. I will review the updated website as soon as it becomes available.